


A Time for Honesty/No Time for Tea

by dozmuffinxc



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dozmuffinxc/pseuds/dozmuffinxc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose's first encounter with the TARDIS's library leads to tears, honesty, and unexpected consolation. For once, there is no time for tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Time for Honesty/No Time for Tea

**Author's Note:**

> "We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us."  
> -Marcel Proust

Rose’s first glimpse of the TARDIS’ library had been accidental. On one of her first trips aboard the Doctor’s impossible ship, she had offered to make tea and been given directions to a kitchen that seemed, for all of the Doctor’s explicit directions, to be anywhere but where it was supposed to be. As she wandered aimlessly, beyond hoping that she would stumble on the right hallway, her hand had carelessly grasped at a brass doorknob and, with a shrug, she had pushed through into a world of shelves.

Shelves upon shelves. She had known the TARDIS was bigger on the inside, but how could it possibly hold a room this vast, this high? Before her were rows of what looked suspiciously like mahogany scaffolding, layers sprouting into more layers all the way up to — a ceiling? She wasn’t sure; the lamps that seemed to blossom up from the carpeted floor left whatever was overhead in shadow, but she would have wagered that there wasn’t a ladder in the entire universe tall enough to reach the top.

For the first time since she had run inside that funny blue box, not pausing to look back, Rose felt like an intruder. She stood there, feet poised to cross the threshold, for what felt like hours before she felt the door close behind her with a gentle but definite thud. Satisfied that she hadn’t been locked in, she made her tentative way to the first bookshelf and laid a careful hand on the binding of a thick volume. Her fingers traced the lettering, words in a language that she couldn’t possibly begin to decipher, as her eyes blurred with sudden, infuriating tears.

This, of course had been the precise moment that the Doctor elbowed his way into the room.

“I send you for tea and you disappear for half an hour. Should’ve known. Never send an ape to do a Timelord’s job!” His tone was jovial, the “ape” joke already old hat between the two of them, but Rose found herself having to swipe fiercely at her eyes to hide the tears that had now begun to flow freely.

“Oy! Are you all right?” He seemed genuinely concerned, and for the span of two seconds, Rose was given a momentary glimpse past his stoic composure into the soul of the Man himself. He had walked to her side then and laid a sturdy hand on her shoulder, and trained his blue eyes on hers. She could have sworn she had forgotten how to breathe, but when he said her name again she shook herself back into the present and returned his quizzical stare with a smile.

“Yeah,” she muttered, brushing the last traces of moisture from her eyelashes with the sleeve of her jumper. “Just bein’ stupid.”

“You are many things, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said, “but ‘stupid’ is not one of them.” As close as he was standing, his face was the only thing that she could see.

“Yeah, but I am, though,” she insisted, taking a few steps backwards until her knees hit the arm of a plum-colored velvet chaise lounge that she had failed to notice was stationed right behind her. It was then, caught between a ridiculously vibrant recliner and the Doctor’s solid, unmoving body that she decided to be completely and unabashedly honest.

“I never passed my A levels,” she admitted, the words tumbling out in rapid succession. Throwing her hands in the air, she fell into the chaise lounge where she tucked her legs under her body and told the Doctor everything. How she had dropped out of school for the handsome-but-ultimately-worthless Jimmy Stone, how she had lived with her mother and worked in a shop when all along she had secretly dreamed of being the kind of woman that her classmates would envy when they met at a far-distant reunion. She even let slip how ironic it seemed that she should have the chance to travel with him, the man whose very name bespoke of eons of knowledge, when she herself had so little to show for a wasted student career.

“I guess this place just made it real, how I’ll never really be good enough for this kind of life.” Good enough for you, she thought, but this much she managed to keep to herself.

By the time she had finished, her face was flushed and her hands were clenched in her lap. She had avoided looking up at the Doctor while she spoke, but when at last she ventured a peek, she was positively gobsmacked by the smile that beamed down at her.

“Is that all?” he laughed, looking inexplicably relieved.

“Is that… what??”

“Oh, Rose,” he began, and when he took her hand in his, all laughter died away. His expression was solemn and intense, and she couldn’t look away.

“Wisdom isn’t something you’re given in school. Never mind what the teachers say,” he added, noticing the skeptical lift of her eyebrows, “it isn’t wrapped up in a nice box with lots of paper and pretty string. A good man once told me that we have to discover wisdom for ourselves. It’s a journey, Rose, one that no one can take for us or spare us. And you know what? I quite agree.

“All this,” he gestured broadly, as though the sweep of his arm could make every book in the library disappear (and maybe it could), “is just words on paper. Someone had to go out and find those words first; that’s what makes books special. Not the fact that they exist, but that they’re hard proof that someone was brave enough to get out there, take on the unknown, and find reason in the madness of the everyday. Does that make sense?”

Did it? Rose wasn’t entirely sure, but she was positive of one thing: she would trust that look in the Doctor’s eyes, and follow it to the ends of the universe. “Yeah,” she said, blushing slightly.

“Good!”

And just like that, all semblance of seriousness, of the intensity that had overtaken his now-familiar features, fell away. His grin was ridiculous in light of what had just passed between them, but she felt that same grin reflected on her own face, and so she laughed when he poked her in the shoulder and asked, “Now, what about that tea, then?”

“No time for tea,” she replied, jumping up from the chaise lounge with her hands on her hips. His confused frown only made her grin broader. “We’re on a journey, remember? All that wisdom out there — well, let’s go and get it!”

He was by her side in a flash, catching her hand up in his and smiling in that slightly-manic way that usually preceded a long run through alien territory and out of the clutches of certain death.

“Your wish is my command,” he said, and then they were half walking, half running along the winding corridors, passing breathlessly through doors that seemed to spring open before them, back to the console room in an impossibly short amount of time, until the hum of the TARDIS was all around them and they were off.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to challenge 50 over at then_theres_us (an LJ, Doctor/Rose fic community), in response to user sapphire_child's "Library" challenge, and LJ user megans_writing's challenge of a particular quote from Marcel Proust.


End file.
